Pick Your Poison
by Urchin of the Riding Stars
Summary: Either way, they're screwed, but at least there's comfort in numbers. Anorexic!ArthurxBulimic!Alfred.


**Lately...lately, my old problems with bulimia nervosa have resurfaced. :( Admittedly kind of scared. Am hoping writing about it** **will help some. Another depressing story, but I do have a cute oneshot with Russia and colony!America cooked up. **

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Alfred F. Jones is a fatty-fat person, the sort of human being Arthur told himself he would _never _allow himself to become, even though the reflection he sees every morning was a mirroid double of Alfred, but worse.

Fat.

Like oil and grease oozing out of the hamburgers Alfred loved so much, clinging to flabby flesh. Disgusting. It's disgusting and wrong; the ridiculous nurses can spout their "loving your body for what it is" shit all they like, but it's easy for _them_ to say._ They're_ the ones constantly fussing over their weight, many of the receptionists looking as if the stitches holding their skin together are about to burst and gleaming yellow ooze is about to come spilling out. Yet their fat, sausage-like fingers are dipping into large bags of cookies and chips and it's just pathetic, because Arthur works so hard to shave off the fat from his body, and it keeps coming, keeps increasing with every breath he takes.

Filthy hypocrites. How dare THEY tell him off when he refused to eat his dinner? How dare THEY lecture him about the importance of good health and of _making an effort_ when they haven't done the like of it once in their rotten lives? _They_ don't run the way he does, as if there's ice fracturing underneath his feet or a horde of mad beasts crashing after him, starved for his blood. _They_ don't look at sweetly frosted buns full of jam and cream and deny themselves the sweet pleasure of tongue and a sated stomach.

They don't shiver the way he does, even when Alfred's wrapped his large old furry jacket around him, which seems to be swallowing him up in dark brown folds. Even the material gets to eat. But Arthur _can't,_ because if he does the _loathing_ and _shame_ will rip at him with feral teeth until he's ready to butcher himself alive and Alfred holds the sobbing mess and keeps the women with their tranquilizers at bay. Thankfully the boy knows how much Arthur hates sedatives, which cause bizarre and terrible dreams you couldn't even frighten yourself out of, because the drugs held you fast with your arms pinned at your sides as you slid downward like a log straight into the depths of hell, bones collapsing under his enormous weight.

It's so hard. So cold in the latest shit shack his ashamed parents had dumped him at. The only thing making it slightly bearable is Alfred, who's rather the awful staff here with their fake smiles and lies and yet NOT, because he is like himself.

It's a strange sort of comparison really, but Arthur feels better sitting with Alfred at the lunch tables rather than with a horde of blank-eyed skeletons who sit mutely as nurses bellow at them to eat, beating dead horses.

In the beginning, Alfred coaxed Arthur to eat, even tried giving him his own food, but after days of stony silence, finally settled for just wolfing down the contents of his plate in seconds.

The staff is on to Alfred now, and every time he wants to "use" the bathroom, a staff member of this godforsaken place has to accompany him, much to the sad-eyed, chubby boy's humiliation. But Arthur is several steps ahead of them—_just wait until we get back to our room, I'll turn up my radio and you can use a plastic bag_—and Alfred is grateful.

It's a little bizarre for anyone to be grateful to Arthur Kirkland, who's reminded every Visiting Day what a nuisance and ungrateful bastard he's being, but he lets it slide.

Interestingly, when Visiting Day comes around, no one from Alfred's family shows up to see him. The heavyweight boy stares at his clenched knuckles and sits alone at a nearby table whilst Mr. Kirkland complains loudly that the insurance company won't continue to cover Arthur's "treatment."

Arthur, long since-accustomed to tuning his father out, simply watches Alfred from a distance, steadily grows resentful. For a boy who can spout out such hearty laughter and quirky jokes that make the female patients and nurses alike giggle and blush, the young man can definitely cry very hard in the dead of night when he thinks Arthur is sleeping and not just shivering.

He tried asking about his roommate's family, but after getting a few noncommittal jerks of the head and grunts, figures he doesn't really need to know. Arthur doesn't know these faceless strangers and yet he hates them. Hates them like his own parents, who want to send him to a Christian conversion camp as soon as he gets his act together and stops starving himself. Hates them like his brother, who was always better at him, a model young athlete with a non-malfunctioning sexuality and prowess at math rather than making up ludicrous stories, which (combined with his Tennis scholarship) earned him a place at Harvard.

Does he care about Alfred? Does he love him? He supposes he must. According to the nurses, if he "really" loved him he wouldn't "encourage" or "enable" Alfred as much as he does, wouldn't let Alfred run to the vending machines and stand as a lookout, but this makes Alfred _happy_.

Or as happy either of them can be here. He might not know the urge of wanting to eat away until the emptiness in your gullet was somewhat full, than to quickly eject as much out again as you could—but he can still _understand_, which is more than most of these naïve doctors with their loveless degrees and complete lack of personal experience can do. Alfred needs this, and Arthur needs to be thin, thin, thin, because if he is he's won, validated his existence, met his goals. The alternative is that the closet monsters pounding for freedom will rip the door off its hinges and neither Alfred nor Arthur can protect each other from The Thing.

The Thing will ruin everything, turn all their desperate and flailing efforts below water to stay afloat into nothing. And then there will be Nothing left, and Nothing is even worse than the blackest of sadnesses that compel Arthur to seek out Alfred's soft, flabby, hot body and cling to it, his shriveled belly aching tremendously as the gentle dope rubs it with his large, clumsy, but oh so careful and laughably sweet hands.

He knows Alfred worries about him, but the other teen doesn't preach, even as his eyes run up and down Arthur's bony body enviously. To Arthur's delight, Alfred has a few tricks of his own—_if you sew quarters in different parts of your pants and be careful not to jingle, you'll have a few more ounces on weighing day_—and will usually accept food when Arthur desperately thrusts his snacks at him with quivering hands and frantic shouts.

It normally winds up being thrown up again, and Arthur holds Alfred's head above the toilet as the younger, larger boy spews semi-digested bits and pieces into the porcelain bowl, panting for air and gagging vigorously, desperate to vomit again.

His back trembles as he dry-heaves, red eyes watering as his throat is scorched with the familiar burn of bile. Arthur hushes him when at last Alfred reluctantly pulls back, stinking of acid and self-loathing, hushes him and pulls him into matchstick arms.

The irony doesn't fail to escape him when Arthur spits most of his dinner into his napkin later that evening, Alfred's the one to scoop him up and carry him to bed. It's still so cold, and his already ugly body is growing steadily hairier, but Alfred still touches it reverently, his large heart beating out a soothing lullaby.

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With the morning sun comes news; the two are to be separated. Alfred will be moved to the one of the sister wards on the outskirts of town, farther away for his mother to not visit him.

The news hits Arthur with all the force of an anvil, and he feels the full horror of The Thing as hot tears soak Alfred's front and the shrunken husk cries bitterly into the shoulder of the oversized teddy bear he has come to love, and the idea of wolfing down cupcakes or greasyfatdisgusting fish and chips has never sounded better, because why not.

Why does it matter what he looks like anymore when they're taking his bear away?

Blue eyes (_Eyes, eyes, I never noticed how beautiful they are, I was always looking at his stomach_) flood with shining pain as Alfred presses Arthur's hand against his lips.

"It's probably for the best." His voice breaks, and his smiling face screws up as Arthur angrily socks him-for what, he doesn't know. "I'll try to be...normal for you, Arthur. You'll always be the prettiest thing in the world to me, but try eatin', okay?"

"Yes, because it's working out SO well for you," Arthur snaps, regretting it instantly as Alfred's boyish face clouds with hurt and he takes a step back. "No. Blast it, I'll gain a thousand pounds if that's what it'll take for me to see you again."

Alfred just exhales quietly through his nostrils and looks up at the ceiling, clutching the small, worn bag of his few worldly possessions close, Arthur closer when the shorter boy worms back into the other's arms.

"Small steps," he says dully. "I guess. Take real nice care of yourself, Arthur, you hear? Treat yourself the way I'd treat you. But nicer."

_But the boy already cradled him like a small prince..._

"And if I get fa-big? What then?"

A weary, twisted smile. "More to love. Though hopefully if ya see me again, I'll be smaller." Alfred looks suddenly like a very old man. An attendant takes Alfred by the shoulders and starts to guide him out the front doors. Hesitantly, Arthur follows, trying to ignore the savage twitching in his breast that suggests he steal Alfred back, rip him back and prove to the staff that he'll do whatever it takes for the two to cohabit again.

"I think I like you" is all he can choke out to Alfred's retreating back, the young man waving as he gets into a car, which takes off and disappears into the distance.


End file.
